The present perfect is a common tense but is often confused because it’s used in a different way in other languages. It’s also confused in English because it’s used in a few different ways.
First we’ll focus on one situation when it’s used and talk about other situations in other posts.
One common use of the present perfect is to ask ‘have you ever ….?’ questions. These questions relate to the life of the person.
eg Have you ever visited China? This question relates to any time in your life.
Form: Have / has + subject + every + past participle (main verb)…
Example: Have you every flown a twin-engine plane?
To answer this question we usually start with;
Yes I have…
No I haven’t…
And after this we can continue with other tenses.
eg Yes I have been to China. (start with present perfect)
I went there five years ago. (add past simple verb form to talk about finished past actions)
I had a great time and visited a lot of wonderful places. (more finished past actions)
I’m going to visit there again in the future for sure! (talk about a future plan)
So we started with a present perfect verb form, then some past simple forms, then a ‘going to future’ verb form. Many other options are possible but what it important to remember is that with ‘have you ever…?’ questions, we usually begin with ‘yes I have….’ or ‘no I haven’t…’ and go from there.
Look at the diagram below for a summary of this.
How to use the present perfect 1.
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Adjectives are put into four different categories before creating their comparative and superlative forms:
one-syllable or short adjectives
two or more syllable long adjectives
adjectives that end with ‘y’
irregular adjectives.
1. To make one-syllable or short adjectives into superlative adjectives we add ‘the’ before the adjective and ‘est’ to the end of the adjective.
short becomes the shortest
long becomes the longest
2. To make two or more syllable long adjectives into superlative adjective add ‘the most’ before the adjective.
comfortable becomes the most comfortable
impressive becomes the most impressive
3. To make adjectives that end with ‘y’ into superlative adjectives we add ‘the’ before the adjective, we remove ‘y’ at the end of the adjective and add ‘iest’.
easy becomes the easiest
heavy becomes the heaviest
4. To make irregular adjectives into superlative adjectives you just have to learn the superlative form. Fortunately they aren’t many.
good becomes the best
bad becomes the worst
Look at the diagram below for a summary of how we create the superlative forms from these different types of adjectives.
Diagram of how to form superlative adjectives.
Activity
What sentences can you create using superlative adjectives? Try to write some using the four different categories of superlative adjectives.
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